THEN: In Lawton Gowey’s 1961 pairing, the Smith Tower (1914) was the tallest building in Seattle, and the Pioneer Square landmark Seattle Hotel (1890) had lost most of its top floor. (by Lawton Gowey)NOW: The mockingly named “Sinking Ship Garage” replaced the ornate brick Seattle Hotel with a concrete garage capped by a railing of bent pipes that resemble a row of basket handles.
Lawton Gowey was a regular visitor to the demolition scene of the Seattle Hotel. His collection of Kodachrome slides records nearly the entire process of the destruction of the 1890 landmark. Gowey dated this slide June 8, 1961. The demolition work began with the interior on the third of April, and here, two months later, most of the top floor is gone.
Rubble dropped from the roof of the Seattle Hotel during the 1949 earthquake. (Courtesy, Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
The removal of the ornate cornice at the top of the five and one-half story landmark got an early start with the city’s 1949 earthquake. For safety, and probably for economy too, much of it was removed following the quake. Still, the hotel stayed opened until the spring of 1960, when its closure was announced. It was widely assumed that it would soon be razed – not renovated. The same was expected for its then still on the skids Pioneer Square, the city’s most historic neighborhood.
When new in 1890 the future Occidental and finally Seattle Hotel was named the Collins Building for its owner. Here, and in the four photos below, James Street is to the left and Mill Street (Yesler Way) to the right.
Lawton Gowey’s record of the garage and a few of its neighbors on March 20, 1974.
Citizen response, however, was surprising. In an attempt to save the hotel, a local cadre of preservationists quickly formed. Although that battle was lost, the enthusiasts for local heritage won the war by saving the neighborhood. The city’s new Department of Community Development, the DCD, formed the Pioneer Square Historic District in 1970.
The Logan Building at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Union Street. Seattle’s first Glass Curtain modern.A model for a National Bank of Commerce designed by Mandeville and Berge, architects for the “Sinking Ship Garage.” Pulled from the Seattle Times for Feb. 26, 1967.
By this time the four-floor parking lot that was built on the hotel’s flatiron footprint was commonly called the “Sinking Ship Garage.” It is still one of our best local jokes. The garage’s architect-engineers, Gilbert Mandeville and Gudmund Berge, were fresh off their 1959 success as local consultants for the Logan Building at Fifth Avenue and Union Street, the city’s first glass curtain box. Here, in Pioneer Square, they added what they and its owners considered a compliment to the historic neighborhood: a basket-handle shaped railing made of pipe, a kind of undulating cornice, that ran along the top of the concrete garage.
The garage’s basket handles aligned with those on the Interurban Building at the southeast corner of Yesler Way and Occidental Avenue.Two more sympathies for the bent pipes on top of the Sinking Ship: the windows in the Mutual Life Building, left-center, and the Pioneer Building, upper -right. Courtesy Lawton Gowey, April 21, 1976
Lawton Gowey loved the Smith Tower. His juxtaposition of the well-wrought tower, the injured hotel, and the wrecker’s crane is at once elegant and ambivalent.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, lads? Golly Jean, yes. Ron Edge has put up two links to past features. Both are rich with references to this triangle. Following that are few more relevant clips cut from past Pacifics.
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Appeared first in Pacific for Sept. 26, 1982 [Click TWICE to ENLARGE]===
Appeared in Pacific first on November 20, 1983. [Click TWICE to enlarge]=====
First appeared in Pacific on July 13, 1986.
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Appeared first as a Historylink demonstration in Pacific on July 19, 1998. I will add that the founding of Historylink still feels novel, and the notion or evidence again that we first started all that in the late 1990s has an uncanny edge for me. And nostalgic. [Click twice to enlarge]=====
First appeared in Pacific, Oct. 31, 1999
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First appeared in Pacific, June 6, 2004
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Circa 1984, looking west from near Second Ave. along the south facade of the Pioneer Square Garage, AKA the “Sinking Ship.” That’s all folks!
THEN: Following the city’s Great Fire of 1889, a trestle was built on University Street, between Front Street (First Avenue) and Railroad Avenue (Alaskan Way). By the time Lawton Gowey photographed what remained of the timber trestle in 1982, it had been shortened and would soon be razed for the Harbor Steps seen in Jean Sherrard’s repeat. (Courtesy Lawton Gowey)NOW: The Harbor Steps, which now join the city to its waterfront via University Street, is perhaps our best example of what might be once the Alaskan Way Viaduct is removed.
I imagine that many Pacific readers will recognize Lawton Gowey’s not so old “then.” Without comparing Jean Sherrard’s repeat, they may remember the location of this stubby trestle from the times they chose Western Avenue to escape the congestion of other downtown avenues. That was a handy avoidance strategy, which had begun already in the 1890s when Western was planked, supported then on its own offshore trestle.
A detail from the 1908 Baist Real Estate Map, showing the two blocks on University Street where the viaduct for wagons built after the Great Fire of 1889 reaches Railroad Avenue from First Avenue.
Here at University Street a timbered ramp that crossed above Western between Front Street (First Avenue) and Railroad Avenue (Alaskan Way) was built soon after the Great Fire of 1889. Plans to rebuild it in steel were never fulfilled, and so all its many repairs kept to wood. Gowey had studied the history of this bridge and many others Seattle subjects. He kept track of the changes in our cityscape. He was not a typical urban photographer; his interests were not so picturesque. These interests, I believe, explain this photo of the somewhat dilapidated trestle on University Street, and the scar where it had been cut short years earlier. Late in the 1930s the city’s engineers recommended removing the ramp’s center pier over Western Ave. That claim stopped all traffic on the ramp; only pedestrians could still reach Western Avenue by the stairway shown.
A clip from The Seattle Times on May 11, 1938.A mid-20’s aerial that is “bordered” by two viaducts, the one between the Pike Place Market and the Pike Street Pier, on the left, and, on the right, two blocks south on the right, the here still standing timber trestle between First Ave. and the Waterfront on University Street.. CLICK TO ENLARGE
I met Lawton Gowey early in 1982, the year he took this photo. By then Lawton was recognized as a local authority on the history of public transportation, and I went to him for help. He honed his interest in the 1930s, when he explored Seattle with his father and the family camera. Later, working downtown as accountant for the Seattle Water Department, he had ready access to many of the city’s archives. With his camera he continued to explore. Some of his
In his Tempus Puget for Nov. 4, 1960, Time’s columnist Lenny Anderson makes note of Lawton Gowey’s contribution to a book on the Seattle-Tacoma Interurban.The Seattle Times report on Lawton Gowey and Ted Carlson’s lecture on Seattle’s streetcar history. November, 27, 1982The SeaFirst tower seen over the wrecked of the Stevens Hotel, in the forground, and the Burke Building, still half-standing on the right, for the construction of the Federal Office Bldg (Named for Henry Jackson) in the 1970s. The Empire Building, with the Olympic National Life sign on the roof, later gave Seattle its first implosion spectacle.
subjects, such as the construction of the SeaFirst Building in the late 1960s, he tracked from his office in the City Light Building and other prospects as well. He used his lunch hours to explore and record changes in the Central Business District and on the waterfront. His collection includes the many shots he took over time and in all directions from the Smith Tower observatory. We’ll insert here two looks up a freezing Third Avenue photographed by Lawton from the Seattle City Light (and water) Building on the west side of 3rd between Madison and Spring Streets.
The fine snow of December 31, 1968. I remember it – a walk with about four others from the Helix Office north across the snowbound University Bridge to one or another coffee shop in the University District. I had an uncanny talent that day for hitting sekeced targets with my snowballs. Honest.A lighter snow (that I do not remember) about a month later on January 27, 1969, again from the City Light Building.
Lawton Gowey died of a heart attack in the spring of 1983 at the mere age of sixty-one. In the little time Lawton and I had to nurture our friendship, we shared many interests, including repeat photography, London history, and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This last fondness was also fortunate for both Bach and the members of Bethany Presbyterian Church. Beginning in 1954 Lawton, was both organist and choir director for that Queen Anne Hill singing congregation.
Lawton Gowey’s 1968 pan of the city from Beacon Hill. The SeaFirst building is approaching its topping-off. It is barely a year since the full-freeway’s dedication. Correction. Not quite full. Note the ramp to nowhere at the bottom. It would remain so for comedic years to come.Lawton Gowey captures the Virginia V and the Goodtime II, nearby, on Nov. 17, 1982.Lawton, on the right, with camera and joined by a friend below the Pike Street Hill Climb, and the then newly opened Waterfront Trolley, which was later mysteriously sent on vacation for, in part (or I believe) the needs of SAM’s sculpture garden at the foot of Broad Street, home then for the trolley’s parking and maintenance garage.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? Yessir. Ron has put up four former features. Startlingly, or predictable for those who remember the week past, the first if last week’s feature, which was also on University Street and near the waterfront. The other three edge-links stay near the neighborhood, and predictably, as is our way, some of the images will appear again and again but in different sets or contexts. This week’s fairly recent (from 1982) photograph is another by Lawton Gowey, and I’ll introduce a portrait or two of Lawton and a clip or two too. Contrarily, I may take some of them and insert it in the above – the main or featured text. Next week we return to another touchstone – Pioneer Square.
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Harbor Steps construction, April 1994. Here I used my architectural “correction” lens, which I later sent off to Berangere in Paris, where by now buildings require little correction. The photo below was photographed on the same spring day at the one above.
Sometime later (I’ve lost the date) with young Italian Cypresses (I believe) potted beside the Step’s fountain.. . . and later still. The Cypresses have grown and the sculpted symbol for Pi, has arrived. For trees and art this undated record may be compared to Jean’s near the top.
THEN: The Seattle Central Business District in 1962. I found this panorama mixed in with the Kodachrome slides photographed by Lawton Gowey. It was most likely taken by my helpful friend Lawton, who died in 1983, or Robert Bradley, Lawton’s friend in the then active Seattle Camera Club. (Courtesy, Lawton Gowey)NOW: Jean last visited the Space Needle in 2011. Stirred by the changes, he makes note that “There are six cranes at work in mid-ground, say north of Stewart Street. The old dip in the cityscape between the Smith Tower and the Space Needle is filling in. We are spawning towers.” For their “hide and seek,” readers may wish to visit Jean’s and my blog dorpatsherrardlomont to study enlarged copies of this week’s featured subjects and more Seattle cityscapes from the Needle.
Here is an opportunity for readers to enjoy our deeply human urge to play hide and seek. What is often made of bricks and tiles in the “then” panorama may still be discovered beside or behind the grand expanse of glass rising so high in the “now.” You may wish to start with the Smith Tower. Only a slice of that 1914 landmark can be found far down Second Avenue on the right. Both views, of course, were photographed from the Space Needle. The historical photographer exposed his or her Kodachrome slide in 1962 when the Space Needle was new. Jean Sherrard recorded his digital repeat late last February, on a perfect day for photography when that winter light with its soft shadows is so forgiving and revealing.
In the upper-right corner of Jean’s repeat, a crisp Mt. Rainier reflects the afternoon sun so that the name, “The Mountain that was God,” seems most appropriate. When Seattle and Tacoma were still arguing whether it should be named Mt. Rainier or Mt. Tacoma, this sublime substitute was used, in part, to transcend the promotional rancor bouncing back and forth between the two cities.
For the more ancient among us, the 1962 panorama may reflect The Seattle Times now long-passed columnist Emmett Watson’s campaign for a “Lesser Seattle.” Watson, with the help of rain and this modest skyline, hoped to discourage Californians from visiting, or worse, staying in Seattle. This was the Central Business District before major leagues, digital commerce, grunge, and acres of tinted glass curtains. Seek and you may still find the Seattle Tower (1928), the Medical Dental Building (1925), and the Roosevelt Hotel (1929), but not the nearly new Horizon House (1961) on First Hill, here hidden behind many newer towers.
Some of the Century 21 parking in the Denny Regrade neighborhood. Notes the fancy foot landscaping on the lower “wing” of the Grosvenor House, bottom-right.Seattle Freeway construction below Capitol Hill. Courtesy, Lawton GoweyLawton Gowey’s ecstatic portrait of the bark Nippon Maru with the new Needle off its stern on June 20, 1962.Seattle Times photographer Josef Scaylea’s contribution to the United States Information Agency’s Russian Language periodical. The original is in color and may redeem it.Ivar Haglund’s Century 21 Fish Bar as foundation for the Space Needle.For skyline supremacy, the Space Needle’s first rival, the Seattle First National Bank, begins its crawl skyward in this 1967 look south from Queen Anne Hill. Courtesy, Seattle TimesBob Hope diverted from reading about the fair and its splendid Space Needle in The Seattle Times special edition.Jean resting with his Nikon at the top of the Space Needle. This may have been taken by Berangere during her last visit to Seattle. Jean will correct me if I am wrong.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? Assuredly Jean – and with your help: your’s and Ron’s. First Ron’s. Directly below are three links to landmarks that can still be found in our cityscape, and appear – in part – from the Space Needle. Next, we will put up some examples of pans from favored Seattle prospects. This will not be a surprise to you, because you have recorded repeats for most of them, and when you arise on Sunday morning – after breakfast – you may, we hope, pair these distinguish Seattle examples of panoramas with your own contemporary repeats. As time allows this evening, following those “classic” now-thens, I’ll put up some other wide-angle shots from hither and thither, reaching as far as your family’s favored summer destination: LaPush on the Washington Coast.
A FEW of SEATTLE’S HISTORICAL PROSPECTS Repeated by Jean Sherrard
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
DENNY HILL
Frank LaRoche’s ca. 1891 look south down Third Ave. from the Denny Hotel construction site on the south summit of Denny Hill. On the left are the Methodists at the southeast corner of Pine Street and Third Avenue.Jean’s approximate repeatThe oldest pan of Seattle among the many taken from Denny Hill by Moore. The date is 1871/2. The summit of First Hill, far left, is still forested beyond the Territorial University campus. The King Street Coal Wharf is still five or six years from construction. Pike Street crosses left-right/east-west beyond the fence. Beacon Hill marks most of the horizon. Second Avenue continues south beyond the shed’s roof.Taken from the same location as the Moore pan above it, this 1878 panorama by Peterson & Bros. includes the King Street Coal Wharf, far right. Most of the old growth forest has been cleared from the summit of First Hill, far left. [Courtesy, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections.]The title for his centerfold to a late 1880s book of Seattle scenes is evidence of Arthur Denny’s intentions them to root the state capitol away from Olympia and plant in on his hill that would, after his kidnapping failure, be named Denny Hill for him.
FIRST HILL
Webster and Stevens Studio three-part pan of First Hill from the nearly completed Smith Tower in 1913 or early 1914. Courtesy, MOHAI.A recent repeat
BEACON HILL
Frame in one of pioneer historian Prosch’s albums, Seattle in 1882 from Beacon Hill with Piner’s Point (now the Pioneer Square Historic District) extending as far south as King Street. (Courtesy University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections.)
A merging of Lawton Gowey’s two-part pan of the tideflats taken from Beacon Hill in 1968. Note the rising SeaFirst tower on the far right.
Stitched from many parts, A. Curtis’ pan of the tideflats to First Hill, concluding with a Beacon Hill cliff, far right, photographed in the mid-teens. [Keep Clicking to Enlarge]CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT from the New Washington Hotel
From the Josephinum roof
GREEN LAKE, LOOKING WEST to Phinney Ridge & the Olympics
An A. Curtis 1903 pan looking west over Green Lake to Phinney Ridge with an Olympic Mountains horizon. This is but two parts of a pan that continues for another third into Wallingford, here out-of-frame to the left.
FROM WEST SEATTLE
A mock-up for Jean’s and my book Washington Then and Now. We once had and perhaps still have a webpage floating the the “cloud” that compared three early pans from the same Duwamish Head prospect that could be edifyingly compared to one of Jean’s repeats. We still do. Open http://www.washingtonthenandnow.com/Readers interested in Seattle cityscapes, especially on and from the waterfront, may wish to visit Ivar’s Acres of Clam and the gallery of historical prints hanging in the restaurant’s long hall between the seating and the kitchen. I mounted this in 1984 before Ivar’s passing in ’85. The irritating flash in this example comes, of course, from my camera, a Nikkormat then, I believe. The panorama on top of the city from West Seattle replaced my ’84 “now.”
FROM PIONEER SQUARE HISTORIC DISTRICT
SEATTLE’S FIRST PANORAMA, by Sammis. Taken from the second floor of Snoqualmie Hall at the southwest corner of Main Street and Commercial Street, long since renamed First Avenue South.Taken from the rooftop of the Bread of Life Mission
ABOVE THE ROOF OF TOWN HALL
Taken during the Christmas holidays from Mike and Donna James apartment
From The KING STREET COAL WHARF
North along the waterfront before the city’s “Great Fire of 1889,” taken from the end of the King Street Coal Wharf.
PETERSON & BROS. Pan From YESLER WHARF, 1878
Knit from three photographs of the Seattle Waterfront in 1878 taken from Yesler’s Wharf. The nearly fresh 1876 grading of Front Street (First Avenue) is evident. Denny Hill, with its two summits, is far left. The broken ship Windward is anchored at the center. Above it is the foot of Madison Street, and then on the horizon the Territorial University at 4th and Seneca. Columbia Street reaches Front Street far right. Yesler’s millpond is scattered about.
THE 1909 ALASKA YUKON PACIFIC EXPOSITION ACROSS PORTAGE BAY
“Look! Up in the Sky” the tethered balloon on the right. Several aerials of the AYP captured campus and beyond were taken from its basket – like those below.Looking south over Portage Bay to Capitol Hill. Montlake is on the left. The Latona Bridge is on the far right.The AYP’S “ARCTIC CIRCLE” with part of the University District on the left.
RETURNING TO THE NEEDLE – ANOTHER INFLATABLE.
A 200-foot long inflatable or soft sculpture commemorating a common feature in the art of several artists very loosely connected with the Shazzam Society in the late 1960s and here into the early 1970s. (For the moment, I do not remember the year. 1971 or 1973, I think.) At the time I was preparing a film, Sky River Rock Fire, most of the footage for which was taken at the several music festivals hereabouts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Here I joined with the crafty help of the Land Truth Circus and its grandee, John Hillding, to raise this UNIVERSAL WORM (aka tiger’s tale) to the rim of the Space Needle where a gust of spring air suddenly threw it below the restaurant where it was penetrated or punctured by the concrete “ribbing” (or spokes) there and returned to earth flapping.
